


Final Girls

by flannery_culp



Category: Scream (TV)
Genre: F/F, Feelings, One Shot, Post S2, confession of love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-29
Updated: 2016-08-29
Packaged: 2018-08-11 17:44:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7901887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flannery_culp/pseuds/flannery_culp
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the remaining members of the Lakewood Six, it's an unspoken truth that the only people they have are each other.</p><p>For Emma and Audrey, it's a little more complicated. Yes, they're both the Final Girls. But there's a lot more to it than that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Final Girls

"Emma," Brooke said, wrapping her arms around her as soon as the door opened. "I was starting to worry about you."

"Sorry," Emma said. She bit her lip and stuck her hands in her back pockets. What was she supposed to say?

Hey, Brooke, sorry I'm late. I wasn't, really, I was just parked outside your house for half an hour having a panic attack.

It was the kind of thing she would understand, but it wasn't the kind of thing you said out loud. "I should have texted you," Emma said instead.

"It's okay," Brooke said. "Next time."

Brooke closed the door, and Emma followed her into the kitchen. Everyone else was already there. She hugged Noah and Audrey, and gave a sheepish nod to Stavo. She still wasn't sure how she felt about him. He hadn't been a part of the Lakewood Six. He didn't really get what the rest of them had been through. But he made Brooke happy, and Emma wasn't going to be the one to take any ounce of happiness away from her.

"Pick your poison," Brooke said, gesturing towards a row of liquor bottles. Without a word Emma reached for the vodka.

"I've got it," Audrey said, grabbing the bottle before Emma could. "You don't know how to mix a drink to save your life." She gave Emma a pat on the back as she walked towards the fridge and looked at her options. She held the glass at eye level to pour the vodka and then topped it off with some expensive-looking sparkling water. "Here," she said, handing Emma the glass. "You deserve something classy."

"Thanks," Emma said. Their fingers brushed as she took the glass.

"A toast," Brooke said, holding up her cup. "To finally getting out of this house."

The clinked glasses and sipped. This is what they did these days: they tried to celebrate everything, no matter how mundane it was. They tried to remind themselves that there were things worth celebrating. That there was some point in living. Usually, it was just each other. For the most part, that was all they had.

 

* * *

 

"I _am_ going to miss the pool," Brooke said. They were all sitting on the floor of Brooke's living room. She had hardly used the pool since the Halloween party. Definitely not at nighttime. The truth was that they were all much happier inside with the doors locked and the alarm on.

"How do we not know anyone else with a pool?" Noah asked.

"We did," Emma said quietly.

Audrey reached for her hand instinctively. Emma was surprised. After all that Nina had done to her, she wasn't exactly the source of sympathy that Emma was expecting. But after everything that had happened, it wasn't really about Nina anymore. They had all lost too much.

Brooke downed her drink, and Stavo passed her the closest bottle. Noah looked into his glass. Even he didn't talk very much these days.

It was weird, being with a group of people who had been through so much. But it was even weirder being with anyone else. They kept close to each other, even if they didn't really have anything to do. It was a relief, in some ways, not to talk about it. They had all done enough interviews; explained the situation to enough people. Received enough condolence messages. The quiet was the only way that any of them could really heal.

 

* * *

 

  
"I'm gonna go see how Brooke's doing," Stavo said. She had disappeared ten minutes ago, saying that she was going upstairs to change. She disappeared a lot these days. None of them blamed her for it. None of them were very good at socializing anymore.

They gave him a nod as he walked upstairs, one of the bottles in his hand.

"Neither of them are coming back down, are they?" Noah asked once Stavo was out of earshot.

"They never do," Audrey said, taking a swig of something.

Emma looked into her glass. She wasn't sure how much she had had to drink. Enough that she was almost numb. Not quite enough though.

"I don't get how she does it," Emma said. "After Jake... I just don't get how she can move on from that. How she can date someone without being terrified."

"Everything about life is terrifying," Audrey said. "Why should dating someone make it any worse?"

"I couldn't do it," Noah said. His gaze was glassy. "I tried to move on after Riley and look where it got me." He swallowed, his face becoming stony. "Look where it got Zoë."

"Noah," Audrey said, rubbing his shoulder.

"Don't say it," Noah said. "I know it's Keiran's fault. But it's my fault too. If I had kept my distance from her, she would still be alive. And I should have known better. And I can't do that again. I can't put someone else in that position."

"I thought I could move on," Emma said. "After Will. I mean I did move on. And I regret it every single day." She pursed her lips. "And I don't think I can trust anyone again after that. I loved someone who was killing my friends. I can't even trust myself anymore."

It was more than she had ever said about it out loud. The words hung in the air between them, soaking into the carpet like a stain the next owners wouldn't be able to remove.

"We have to do what we can to move on," Audrey said. She sounded confident, but she was clutching her glass with much more force than she should have been. "If we don't, Keiran wins."

"You haven't dated anyone since Rachel," Noah said, quietly.

Audrey's eyes flicked towards Emma, and then looked down. "I haven't exactly had any opportunities."

 

* * *

 

"I think Noah's out for the night," Emma said. She gestured with her head towards the couch above them. Noah was curled up in a ball, his mouth open slightly.

"And then there were two," Audrey said. She got down from the chair and lay on her stomach, her elbows propped on the floor to mirror Emma. "Are you tired? I think it's late."

Emma shook her head. "You know how the whole sleeping thing goes these days."

Audrey nodded. She knew better than anyone. She was the one Emma called in the middle of the night when she woke up from a dream. They all had nightmares, but Audrey was the only other final girl. She was the only one who could truly understand what Emma had been through.

It had taken her awhile not to feel like she had been betrayed by Audrey. She still did, sometimes. But Audrey had been betrayed as well. She knew what it was like to trust someone and have the rug ripped out from underneath you.

"I know," Audrey said. It didn't matter what time Emma called, Audrey was always awake. It went the other way, sometimes. But when Audrey called it was almost always to apologize.

"I'm sorry," Emma said. She didn't mean to say it, but she still meant it.

"You don't have to be sorry," Audrey said. "You're going through the same stuff. The last person I need pity from is you."

"I mean for leaving you," Emma said. Audrey was so close to her that she had to turn her head so she wasn't looking her in the eyes. "The way I treated you when I became friends with everyone else. If I had known what was going on... It was really shitty of me. I'm sorry."

"It's okay," Audrey said, although her voice wasn't very convincing. "It's... I forgive you." That one was slightly more convincing.

 

* * *

 

  
"Audrey?" Emma asked. They were lying next to each other on their backs, staring up at the vaulted ceiling. The first signs of sunrise were streaming in through the windows.

"Yeah?" Audrey asked.

"I think I knew," she said. She had reached the point of exhaustion where she didn't have a guard up anymore. She wasn't nervous or unsure. The thing that had been weighing on her mind for weeks—that she had hardly even been able to admit to herself—was now just a thought like any other. "Not really, I mean. But on some level. Subconsciously. And I think it scared me. And that's why I pulled away."

She waited for Audrey to respond. The fear started to set in when she didn't. Had she said the wrong thing? Had Audrey fallen asleep? Had she died? She knew it was a stupid thought, but she turned to check anyway.

She was there, her hands folded on her chest and her eyes still trained on the ceiling. Emma's heart rate settled.

"Why did it scare you?" Audrey asked.

Emma bit her lip. "Because I didn't want to think about it," she said. "Because running away was a lot easier than confronting my feelings. But I can't... I'm sick of running. I can't keep running anymore."

"Then stop running," Audrey said. She made it sound so simple.

"I don't know how to," Emma said. Was she crying? When had she started crying?

"Shh," Audrey said, turning on her side to face her. "It's okay. Everything's okay." She ran a hand along Emma's cheek, brushing her hair behind her ear,

"It's not okay," Emma said. "We're never going to be okay again."

"Of course we're not," Audrey said. "How the fuck could we possibly be okay again?"

"How do you live like that?" Emma asked. She was sputtering her words, unsure of how much of it was clear through the tears. "How do you keep yourself going knowing that?"

"Because there are people I care about," Audrey said. "And even if nobody else gets what I'm going through, I know that they do." She swiped a thumb underneath Emma's eye, wiping away the tears. "I know that you do. And you'll get through this. You're the final girl, okay? You're my final girl."

Emma looked at Audrey's face, studying the curve of her face. It felt so good to be seen by someone. "I trust you," Emma said, reaching for her hand. "I need you to know that I trust you."

"It's okay if you don't," Audrey said, quietly.

Without half a thought, Emma kissed her. Audrey seemed surprised at first, but soon she responded to Emma's touch. Audrey's lips moved with hers, her hand finding Emma's waist as Emma's worked her way through her hair. For the first time since she found out the truth about Keiran, she felt safe. She rolled over on top of Audrey, her hands frantic as they tried to find the balance between touching Audrey and not crashing into her.

She tasted like whiskey and wine. Had she ever been this comfortable with another human being? Definitely not with Will. Will had been the kind of boy she was supposed to date. It had been easy, but it had never been comfortable.

Underneath the layer that she put on for the rest of the world, Audrey was so soft. She was so gentle, so careful of everything that could set Emma off.

It hadn't been like this with Keiran, either. There had been times where she thought it was, but all of those memories seemed different now.

It wasn't just what they had been through together in the last few months. It had nothing to do with the fact that they had killed together. It was the fact that they had lived together. Emma had known Audrey longer than anyone else. They had been through Audrey's mom getting sick. They had been through Emma's parents' divorce. They knew each other better than anyone else.

Their lips parted. Emma's face hovered inches above Audrey's, their breathing heavy as their bodies rose and fell together. "I want to stop running," she said, pressing her forehead against Audrey's. "You're my final girl, too."


End file.
